


snowflakes

by tastyweeds



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Blue Lions Students as Family (Fire Emblem), Death, Faerghus deserves its own warning, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 13:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30140307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastyweeds/pseuds/tastyweeds
Summary: Sylvain remembers screaming in Miklan’s face, rage to mask his anguish. The cage inside his chest springs open, and barbed words shoot out and strike true before he punctuates them with his spear.The truth he couldn’t speak whispers in his veins.I hate you, but I still love you, and I don’t know which is worse.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 28





	snowflakes

**Author's Note:**

> this one's personal
> 
> cw: grief, and lots of it; intense survivor's guilt; Sylvain's abusive, shitty family and his maladaptive coping, mental health and self-hate struggles; a smattering of foul language for relatable reasons

i.

He doesn’t deliver the fatal blow, but he kills them both the same.

The floor is a crimson sea. Some seeps from his wounds; the rest leaks from what remains of his brother. Intermingled, there’s no telltale mark of the difference that severed their fates like the sharpest blade.

The battle’s final moments are a splatter of disjointed memories. With a paltry few skirmishes under their belts, none of the students is prepared for the chaos. Half would be dead without a healer’s intervention, lost to ambushes from blind corners and back stairwells. By the fight’s climax, they’re reeling in confusion from the relentless onslaught, arms shaking from the effort of countless, desperate parries. The Lions don’t surge so much as stumble towards the bandit-king. His sneer twists a knife in Sylvain’s gut when they reunite for the first time in years and the last time in their lives.

Sylvain remembers screaming in Miklan’s face, rage to mask his anguish. The cage inside his chest springs open, and barbed words shoot out and strike true before he punctuates them with his spear. 

The truth he couldn’t speak whispers in his veins. _I hate you, but I still love you, and I don’t know which is worse._

ii.

The massive tower falls silent. Weight pins him where he kneels in the gore, and he thinks he might stay there all night. He’s dimly aware of Mercedes closing the ragged slashes across his ribs, where Miklan/not-Miklan ripped through his armor like wet parchment. He wants her to stop, but he’s too tired to make the request. He’s so far removed from the scene it’s like being, not so much numb as anesthetized, which is a goddamn achievement considering how little he feels at the best of times. 

He watches what happens. Dimitri crouches next to him and gently pries the spear from his grip, and there’s Felix hovering over Dimitri’s shoulder, and Dedue keeping watch at the entry, and Miklan bleeding out in the shadows. Sylvain meets Dimitri’s eyes and catches a glimpse of the losses he’s carried for years in silence — they’re all so good at suffering in Faerghus, so perfectly stoic — and he’s horribly grateful that Dimitri knows there’s nothing to say that makes this better, and he’s shamefully angry because Dimitri never had a brother to lose.

“I have to tell our parents,” Sylvain croaks.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix snaps. His expression simmers with something complicated. “I’ll ask the old man. We all know he’ll do it if I ask.” 

Felix believes that he hates his father. He refuses to write home and sneers when adults ask after Rodrigue’s health. Years from now, Sylvain will understand these are the words that make him fall in love with his best friend.

“Thank you, Felix,” Dimitri says.

“Whatever, boar.” But there’s no venom behind the retort. Felix stares at Miklan’s ruined corpse, and there are ghosts in his eyes that look a lot like Dimitri’s, and isn’t that a revelation that Sylvain could have figured out sooner if he hadn’t been drinking and fucking his way through his own demons.

“We should go,” Byleth says, too calm. He wonders how many monsters they’ve slain, whether any were people they loved.

Dedue and Felix help him stand, and Ingrid retrieves Lady from where she’s bolted to a corner of the cavernous space. Lady knew his brother once, and she’s snorting and wild-eyed, quivering under Sylvain’s touch as he leans into her shaggy neck. Shit. His brother. His brother is dead, and Sylvain can’t leave him here, even if he can’t say why. He’s about to turn back when he hears a muted grunt and turns to see Dimitri already lifting Miklan over his shoulder while Byleth leads her horse across the bloodstained floor.

iii.

Maybe Felix kills Miklan, his focus pointed at the monster’s throat, teeth bared in a battle cry. If there is a boar in this house, it has a brother, which is why Sylvain refuses to engage with what Felix insists is the true version of events. Every narrator is a victim and a villain. Everyone tells the stories they need to survive.

Maybe Ingrid kills Miklan, dodges and wheels like a valkyrie, their best warrior and the most afraid. Her hands alight on Sylvain’s back to gather him up the way she’s done for years, salvaging friends’ pieces when she can’t hold her own. He keeps a few fragments tucked in his back pocket, hoping one day she’ll ask for them. 

Maybe Dimitri kills Miklan, launching himself headlong like he’s a weapon and not its wielder, like he would die to protect his classmates from the things he’s seen, bathe himself in blood to stop it from staining them, too. It’s a clever subterfuge — it takes personal experience to spot the self-hatred — but Sylvain keeps the insight to himself. They share too damned much in common, and they can’t both be wrong.

Most likely, it takes all three to kill Miklan, while Sylvain clings to the spear he buried in the monster’s side and begs their dispassionate goddess to let him trade places this one fucking time. _The Faerghus Four_ , other students tease, and it’s fair: they are nigh unstoppable during fights, moving like a single unit with a shared consciousness, a simultaneous firing of synapses and instincts.

Maybe it should worry him more that they find each other so naturally in battle, when in peace they’re worlds apart.

iv.

He doesn’t remember returning to Garreg Mach in a downpour, yet here he is, dripping wet and detached but eerily rational as he explains to the wide-eyed gatekeeper that yes, this is his (dead) brother and they need a place to bury him. The gatekeeper observes that he’s ridden Lady straight up the stairs onto the landing and sends for Seteth. While they wait, Ingrid coaxes Sylvain into dismounting and takes his saint of a horse back to the stables. 

The impassive aid to the archbishop takes in the bedraggled cluster of students and the body draped over Byleth’s mount. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I presume Margrave Gautier will not be interested in paying to bring the body home?”

Sylvain speaks before he thinks better of it. “As soon as he’d confirmed I had a Crest, our father instructed the staff to move Miklan from his room down to the servants’ quarters.” He looks back at his brother’s empty hands, dangling from the saddle. “My brother was four years old.”

“What he means,” snaps the damp, ferocious shadow at Sylvain’s elbow, “is the margrave would leave Miklan to rot where he fell. This fool’s not his father.”

Seteth permits himself a single sigh that resonates with eons of suffering. 

“I could cite half a dozen scriptures to justify why we cannot inter your brother on holy ground. However,” Seteth’s eyes soften when they land on Sylvain, “there is a field below the cathedral cemetery where we bury souls whose names died with them, and I’d be a hypocrite if I swore to know whether every one of them repented before death. Go on now, before I come to my senses.”

He should thank Seteth, but he loses the thread for a bit, and he stands in a fresh-dug hole with a muddy spade in his blistered hands. Dawn struggles to claim the horizon. Annette and Mercedes light their fingertips like candle wicks, and Dedue and Dimitri lift the body and help him settle it into the grave. Miklan is wrapped in a makeshift shroud, which upon inspection is a dining hall linen, and Ashe flushes and stammers. Sylvain laughs from where he squelches ankle-deep and half-frozen next to his dead brother in a stolen tablecloth, until he flinches for feeling anything close to happiness.

Sleet pelts them as they refill the muck, Annette humming a tune that sands the edges off the miserable morning. When they finish, Dimitri looks to Sylvain.

“Would you like us to say anything?” Dimitri shoves a sheaf of soaked hair away from his eyes, and Sylvain remembers the first time he visited Fhirdiad, the way the undersized, six-year-old prince careened in from the stables to tackle him in a fierce embrace, shouting, “Are you Sylvain? Do you want to be my big brother?”

Sylvain shrugs and reverts to form. “I think we’ve done enough. He’s in the ground instead of laid out for the wolves, and anyway it’s not like he can complain. Besides, this weather’s going to make us all sick, and then I’ll be stuck in bed when I could be drowning my sorrows with sympathetic women.” He knows he’s not fooling anyone when Ingrid doesn’t even consider rising to the bait.

The coda of an old ballad drifts through his mind as he follows his friends indoors. 

_May you only remember the sweetest things._

That doesn’t leave many options.

v.

Sylvain lost Miklan by inches. Lost him to forgotten birthdays and stinging slaps, to burnt crops and bandits. They share nothing and everything in common, so hating Miklan is like hating himself, and he masters only the latter. 

In Gautier, it was them against the world, until it wasn’t. Their inheritance was a series of failed tests: unspoken rules, constant vigilance, breaking and being broken. Sylvain hid; Miklan howled. Bait pup and fighting dog. He’s half-convinced their parents pitted them against each other on purpose, but then he feels paranoid and ridiculous; he’s the one they at least pretend to love some of the time. Better food, better clothes, better life — what right does he have to be this way? 

He avoids confessionals, but he’s done penance a-plenty. The hits he took, the secrets he kept, the excuses he made, the hope he relit like a votive, again and again and again. Miklan broke his arm, but Miklan taught him how to climb a tree. Miklan left him on a mountain, but Miklan made faces behind the margrave’s back when their father delivered his lectures. Miklan threw him down a well, but Miklan was his brother before he became his enemy, and now Sylvain has neither. There will never be another person who shares their terrible blood tie, and instead of relief, he feels bereft and empty.

Twenty years of losses pile like snowdrifts. In hindsight, it’s an avalanche, but it happens snowflake by snowflake.

vi.

He slumps in a steaming tub, the arrival of which he cannot recall. Pity, as it must have been a feat judging by the gouges and scorch marks on the wood planks.

He wonders if he’s an only child. The Only. The water grows tepid and turns the color of weak elderberry tea, and he needs to scrub the last bits of his brother off his face, but the effort required to move feels insurmountable. Instead, he breathes for awhile, wrung out and soaked through, empty and overflowing. He tangles his hair between his fingers and entertains an impulse to claw furrows through his scalp so the pain can bleed out, too much for one body to hold.

He drags himself onto the floor when the water’s gone cold and sits motionless in a towel until Dedue arrives with a beautiful meal that will go to waste.

vii.

“I hate this,” he announces. He’s lying on his back in bed while Mercedes casts a complicated healing spell to mend the most stubborn of his cracked ribs. “Library shelves — augh, fuck! _Why_ , Mercedes? — stuffed with white magic texts, and not a single incantation to help me here?”

“I wonder whether the world would be better or worse if we had spells like that?” The last sparks of kinetic energy extinguish under her fingers as she extends them over his chest. 

“Goddess, point taken, it actually could be worse.” Sylvain moans and puts his hands over his face. “A quick cure sure sounds tempting, though.”

“Would you want one?” She cups the question in her palm for him to consider.

“Mercedes with the tough questions. Aren’t you supposed to comfort the grieving?” He tries remembering how a smile feels. “Sorry. When I was a snot-nosed brat, I couldn’t wait for him to be gone. That kid stayed up late to wish on every star he could find, because he was going to have a celebration when the day finally arrived. He’d be thrilled to learn he even stabbed the bastard first. But then it’s done, and…” He let his hands drop to his sides and closes his eyes. “I guess that’s the difference between knowing something’s coming and having it land on your doorstep. Not sure how I feel about all this emotional vulnerability and people taking care of me, either.”

Mercedes contemplates her open palm. He forgets sometimes that she’s also loved and lost a brother. Their house is a chessboard missing half its pieces.

“You know we’ll do whatever you need, Sylvain. Do you want to be alone?”

He thinks about Ingrid flying where no one can see her face, Felix murdering his feelings, Dimitri locking away his pain and eating the key. He reaches for Mercedes’ hand.

“Yes. More than anything,” he says, “so please, don’t let me.”

viii.

His friends become a steady stream for him to float. Time takes the shape of their company, gentle and kind when Dedue trims herbs at the desk, soft and concerned when Ingrid arrives with his tack and wordlessly passes her leather conditioner. Behind the closed door, he’s free to be whatever cluster of severed nerves he is at the moment, and whoever manages the roster seems to understand which people are allowed a glimpse, while curious onlookers are firmly steered back the way they came. 

Ashe reads from dusty knights’ tales until his voice cracks; it’s only been two months since he was his own family's gravedigger. Annette and Dorothea sing and present a crocheted fox from Bernie and a hand-punched armband from Leonie. Flayn sneaks in and peppers him with questions about how to order pints at drinking houses. Marianne whispers that Dorte is watching over Lady. Byleth drops off coursework and insists they know he’ll ace his final exams to graduate, whether or not he completes the assignments. 

Each evening when the bells chime, he contemplates dragging himself to town for a proper bout of self-destruction, but Felix and Dimitri orbit him from dusk to dawn. Neither sleeps much anyway, and the insomniac prince takes 11 to 3, arriving with a stack of library books that he pores over until Felix taps on the door to carry Sylvain through sunrise. They’ve established a temporary detente, or at least agreed not to visibly frustrate each other when Sylvain lies awake within earshot. He’s too fatigued to pry, which only seems to worry them more. 

Most nights, the current roars in his ears. Sometimes he’s the water, and sometimes he’s battered against the rocks. He bobs and tumbles, snatches a breath. His friends throw lines and he reaches despite himself, doing his best not to pull them downstream. 

ix.

Several days later, he plasters on the right expression before he ventures downstairs. Out in the world, he becomes who he needs to be to survive; he disrupts class, skips training, drinks through dinner, and flirts when people ask how he’s doing. He’s okay. He’s fine! (He is not and never has been.) If anyone persists, he makes tasteless jokes about dead siblings until they stop inquiring. His grief is a burst dam. He wants to uproot trees, tear homes from their foundations, drown families out of spite. Anyone standing on the banks will be swept away.

People keep winding up in the water. He spends a month of Saturdays repairing cathedral pews because he snaps and tells Lady Rhea that the four saints can suck his dick when she calls Miklan’s death divine will. He spends the same month of Sundays pulling weeds after he punches Lorenz in the mouth when the spindly bastard says his brother’s better off dead.

Dedue lends a hand and voluntarily spends weekends with his sorry face. Eventually Sylvain asks about it when they’re draped off the dock, grappling with troublesome patches of floating primrose that need eradicating before they smother the pond. It’s an odd conversation to have upside-down, but everything feels strange these days, and he doesn’t have room to consider other people’s comfort.

“You expect me to say something profound,” Dedue says, pulling at the dense mats of water weeds.

“Not really,” Sylvain plunges his arm past the elbow and snares a vine that entangles one of the pilings. “Life’s more meaningless than usual lately, so nothing anyone says impresses me. Plus my memory’s shot to hell these days, so there’s no need to waste the effort dredging up some priceless pearl of wisdom.”

“In that case,” Dedue grunts and yanks a clump of wet plants free, “I understand how tiring it is when others keep telling you how to feel about the people you’ve lost.” A smile flashes in his eyes and darts back to the depths. “More importantly, I have always wanted to hit Lorenz Hellman Gloucester in the face. This is my way of thanking you.”

Sylvain laughs until he loses his balance and falls off the dock.

x.

When the margrave finally writes, it’s five weeks after Miklan’s death and Sylvain mostly sleeps alone again. The letter is a jumbled mess that weaponizes fury to sabotage grief and guilt, masquerading as a screed against Miklan’s wasted life. A brief postscript notes the margravine isn’t eating. Sylvain reads and rereads the tidy script, wondering why he bothers. His father, his mother, his whole smashed-to-splinters family — they’re all bumping into each other, snarls and snags threatening to become logjams, and somewhere underneath are the feelings he’s supposed to name. 

In the middle of the night, he crumples the letter in his fists and takes it to the cemetery, where he drops the pages onto his brother’s grave and casts a spell that makes words erupt in flames, nearly setting the grass alight. Once he’s hastily extinguished the blaze, he sits cross-legged on the ground beside the chipped basalt that serves as a temporary marker. Praying feels pointless, but he thinks about Miklan while the chill of the frozen ground seeps into his skin. 

“What am I doing here?” He scrapes frost from blades of grass with the edge of his fingernail. “I don’t even know who I’m mourning. It’s not like you knew me anymore. I sure as hell didn’t know you.”

Sylvain glares at the stone. “In case I haven’t made it clear, you’re not forgiven. No fucking way, not after everything you did to me. To us. Did you know some stupid part of me still wanted to believe that our family could get better? Because I didn’t. Fun times, learning I had any bit of my heart left for you to trample.”

He pokes the pile of ashes. “And thank you so much for ditching me with the consequences one last time. Dad thinks it’s my fault, big surprise there. He also says you’re trash that doesn’t deserve to be buried under the family name — and I know you’d despise having Gautier on your stone as much as he would, so I’ll make sure it’s etched in big, bold letters.”

He stands and paces before the fresh-turned earth. “I hate them too, you know. They failed us both all the times it counted. Acting shocked when you were everything they taught you to be. What did they think was going to happen?

“You know what the worst part is, at least today?” He wipes his eyes and wonders when he started shouting. “I would have torn apart the kingdom if I thought it would’ve helped you. I’d have cut up my own face, goddess damn you, even after you shoved me down the stairs, and knocked out my teeth when I was too small to fight back, and told me I was worthless, that my life was a joke, that no one could ever love a stupid piece of shit like me.” 

He’s back on the ground with his forehead in the dirt, crying harder than anyone living has seen. “You were my big brother. I didn’t _have_ anyone else to protect me.” He slams a fist into the grass. “I didn’t _want_ anyone else, you fucking asshole. I wanted you.”

Miklan doesn’t respond, of course. Eventually, Sylvain rolls onto his back and wraps his arms around his chest, looking up at the indifferent sky, and his loss feels like a speck of light amid brighter stars, and his loss feels like the infinite void that swallows the space between them.

xi.

In the dark hall, he raps on the door, waits out the muffled cursing and knocks again, tries not to notice the subtle waves in his friend’s hair when Felix finally appears rubbing his eyes.

“It’s after three,” Sylvain says, holding up his hands: _I know, but you all set the rules._

“Like I care if the boar gets enough sleep.” Felix steps out of the entry and Sylvain slips through, ready to let the comment slide, the way he thought he did with everything else, but he never figured out how to let go of Miklan, and admitting it is changing something in him.

“Hey, can I ask you a favor?” Sylvain sinks onto the mattress and props his back against the wall, keeping his voice low.

“You woke me up and barged in already, so sure, what’s one more request?” Felix fusses with his nightshirt before he settles next to Sylvain, shoulder-to-shoulder.

There’s a string in his chest pulling tight, and he fights the urge to let it snap. “Could you maybe cool it with the whole ‘our friends are beasts’ thing, at least around me?”

Felix stiffens and sucks in his breath. Sylvain takes a risk, takes Felix’s hand, rests a thumb over the pulse in his wrist and traces a ridge of bone.

“You and me, we’ve lost enough,” he says, keeping his eyes on their hands. “So it wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you how to feel, and I’m not asking you to change your mind. But Dimitri and Dedue…they’ve buried so many people, Felix. And they’re still here. Like us.”

“It’s not the same,” Felix says, but he doesn’t move away. Sylvain thinks about Dedue and the sister whose name he keeps safe in his heart, Dimitri and the gauntlets he wears even at the height of summer.

“I’m not asking for them to be allowed into the dead brothers club,” Sylvain says, and Felix snorts. “I just need you to try, okay? I’ve spent a lot of late nights recently staring at the walls with His Highness for company, and the worst thing I can say about him is that he’s fucked up enough to stay friends with us. Well, that, and I’m pretty sure he’s stealing library books.”

“Oh, he definitely steals library books.” Felix squeezes Sylvain’s hand.

“Come on, Felix. Please?”

Felix sighs and drops Sylvain’s hand to cross his arms. “Fine. Around you, I’ll try not to be…”

“Such an asshole?”

Felix punches Sylvain in the arm, then pulls him down onto the mattress.

“You staying?”

“Mm-hmm. Bad night.” Sylvain snuggles into Felix and draws the blanket up over them both.

“You’re freezing,” Felix mutters, giving Sylvain’s hair an irritated tug like it’s his fault the weather sucks. “Where have you been?”

“Got a letter from Dad.”

“Fuck your father.” In the moonlight, Felix has angles and edges as sharp as his words. “And you’re making my feet cold because…?”

“Needed to talk to Miklan.”

There’s no reply. There doesn’t need to be. More than once in the months after Glenn’s death, Sylvain found Felix asleep on his brother’s grave.

They doze until Sylvain escapes with a shuddering gasp from his newest nightmare, the one where he’s back in Conand Tower killing his brother.

“Hey…Breathe. Just breathe.” Felix stirs and rubs his damp back with a sleep-heavy hand. “I’m here, Sylvain. You’re safe.”

Sylvain leans into Felix’s touch, feeling cartilage crunch and part under his spear. The morning bell booms, and this day promises to be rough, with his heart pounding and his stomach in knots, the pillow wet under his cheek. 

“Skip class and stay in bed awhile?” He tries to sound lighthearted.

“Can’t. I failed my reason exam last week, remember? The professor won’t let me use the training grounds until I cast a decent thunder spell.” Felix pulls a face and slides past him to retrieve his uniform from a haphazard pile of clothes on the chair. He gives the shirt a quick sniff, shrugs, and shakes out the worst wrinkles, ignoring Sylvain’s cringe. “You should come, too, before the bo—before our self-appointed teacher’s pet decides he’s done sparing you from his lectures.”

Felix is right, he knows, but knowing isn’t enough. He’s prone beneath a book press, and anxiety turns the screw until it flattens him. It’s so much more than Miklan, he wants to say. There’s famine where my heart should be, and you should leave me here, Fe, close the door behind you, go to breakfast, go to class, and keep going, get as far away as you can, because I’ll drag you right down with me. Miklan saw it from the beginning: I’m the avalanche.

Felix finishes dressing and snatches up his sword belt, then pauses to read Sylvain’s face. His eyes narrow. “No,” he says, adamant, and comes to sit on the bed. He brushes a rebellious lock away from Sylvain’s temple and tucks it behind his ear. “I’ll be right back.”

He leaves the door open. Misery fills the empty space but doesn’t quite get comfortable before it’s pushed out when Felix shoves Dimitri into the room. Dimitri also appears to have had a rough night; he’s managed to pull on his trousers, but his shirt’s undone and his hair’s more catastrophic than usual.

“Good morning, Sylvain. I don’t mean to be rude, Felix, but is there something you wanted?” Dimitri closes up his collar, but not fast enough to hide the suggestive marks that trail down his neck. Sylvain clears his throat and raises an eyebrow, taking note of the prince’s blush in response. 

“That thing we talked about,” Felix says, glaring at Dimitri. “You need to make it happen.”

“Now?" Dimitri looks bewildered. “But we have class.” 

“Four saints, you’re the prince of Faerghus, you idiot. Use it to your advantage for once — your boyfriend certainly does. I’ll tell the professor you had to meet your uncle’s staff in town, and Sylvain went along because he’s representing the north in the margrave’s absence or something like that.”

Dimitri’s jaw drops almost as far as Sylvain’s, who sits up before he realizes he’s moved.

Sylvain says “Boyfriend?” and Dimitri says “Curse you both,” and Felix says “Get the fuck out of my room.”

xii.

Bracing north winds poke fingers in their eyes as Dimitri and Sylvain walk across the grounds to the stables. Lady nickers when she hears his familiar steps, and he apologizes for his absence with an extended grooming session. 

“Not the first time we’ve been through hell, is it?” he murmurs, currying the thick coat under her mane. “Won’t be the last, either. Glad you keep me around, girl.”

Lady bats his arm with her broad nose until he scratches the itchy spot under her forelock. Muscle memory carries him through the familiar routine, and the riot in his blood quells to a tolerable chatter as he works from top to tail. He’s applying an overdue coat of hoof conditioner when he hears metal shoes strike the stone aisleway and turns to see Dimitri bareback astride his black charger, using a halter in place of a bridle.

“Your Highness? I think you’re missing a few things.” 

These are the good days for Dimitri, though Sylvain can’t know that yet. Remire is still a town, not a trigger. He never sleeps enough, but his eyes are clear and bright, and he does his best to keep their boisterous house in a vague semblance of order.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to ride without your tack, Sylvain.” Dimitri smirks, and it’s the impish smile of the boy Sylvain knew before everything went sideways for House Blaiddyd.

“If you think skipping class for an ill-advised jaunt is the way to win me over—” Sylvain clips Lady’s lead rope to itself through the halter to fashion a makeshift rein of sorts and vaults onto her back, galloping away “—you have more game than I thought, my liege.”

An irate monk yells ungodly curses when they pass close enough to rustle his robes. Sylvain’s skin still feels too tight, but the rush is enough to make him grin when they tear past the guards and blast out the open gate. The descent from Garreg Mach is treacherous, but it’s clear this isn’t Dimitri’s first foray; they nimbly skirt the crumbling parts of the road and leap a bordering fence line on a broad ridge that divides the river from the town below the monastery. The open field’s easy to read, so Sylvain gives Lady her head and turns it into a proper race.

“This is insane,” he yells as alarmed sheep bleat and scatter from their path.

“First one to the oak!” Dimitri crouches over Llew’s neck and urges him towards the ancient tree that arcs over the hill a few hundred yards away. 

Llew is half-Imperial Sporthorse, and his massive stride is a sight to behold, but Lady’s no quitter. They finish in a dead heat after Llew gets distracted and half-spooks at an errant partridge that erupts from a thorn bush beside his head. Sylvain flicks sweat from his brow and strokes Lady’s damp neck. 

“Seiros and Sothis, that stallion of yours keeps getting faster,” he pants. “When was the last time we rode just for the fun of it?”

Dimitri looks embarrassed. “Actually, I go whenever the moon’s full enough to light the way. It is one of the only things that helps when sleep won’t come.”

Sylvain nods. “You can’t focus on anything but the horse unless you’re willing to risk a long, cold walk back to Garreg Mach.”

The prince toys with a hank of Llew’s thick mane. “When I’m out here, I don’t forget the things that keep me up at night, but they do...quiet down a bit, I suppose.”

Like snowfall, he thinks, the way winter flurries soften the world just enough to hear your own heart.

_May you only remember the sweetest things._

“Hey Dimitri?” Sylvain doesn’t use his name often, because he wants it to mean something when he does.

Dimitri gazes off over the valley, lost in thought. He had looked so small the morning they buried his father’s empty casket, engulfed by nobles who jockeyed to be seen but never touched him.

“Sorry, Sylvain, did you say something?” 

“Nah. Just…thanks. For, you know.” He’s not sure Dimitri does know, and he wishes he could tell him. Instead, he brings Lady alongside Llew and reaches out to clasp Dimitri’s shoulder. Dimitri looks surprised, but then he reaches up and briefly squeezes Sylvain’s hand like it’s something fragile and treasured.

“You should thank Felix instead,” he says. “He’s been at me for weeks to take you riding.”

They amble back to Garreg Mach, and Sylvain thinks about Felix, and Dimitri, and Dedue, and Mercedes and Ingrid and all of the people who look at him and see someone worth knowing. He doesn’t understand it, but it isn’t nothing. Maybe that means he isn’t, either.

“So, are we going to talk about the mysterious lover who’s been biting your neck? Because I’m not going to drop it until you give me a name.” 

Dimitri loses his balance and involuntarily squeezes Llew’s sides. He mutters an apology to the stallion, fixes Sylvain with a scathing side eye, and picks up the canter. The back of his neck is scarlet when they reach the fence, and Sylvain slows to a walk and turns Lady towards the pasture gate so Dimitri can escape with what remains of his dignity. This time, he doesn’t feel guilty for admitting how good it feels to breathe again.

xiii.

At Ingrid’s urging, he begins to meet with Seteth every week, and it’s as pleasant as vacationing in Ailell, but he keeps going. After a month, he convinces Felix to try, and Felix hates it and makes another appointment. Finally, Sylvain gives in and asks about starting a student group for anyone going through shit.

“As long as you don’t call it that, Mr. Gautier, I would be glad to participate,” Seteth says, contorting his face in a valiant struggle to remain somber.

There are good days and bad days. He smuggles a foundling calico kitten into his room who walks on his face in the morning with tiny, spurred toes. She doesn’t let him languish in bed; there’s breakfast to secure and a window to unlatch and a world to explore. He remembers it’s his day to muck stalls and puts on his boots. He opens the door, and there’s always someone waiting.

On winter solstice, he sneaks out to the potter’s field at midnight, where unmarked stones sleep in caps of snow. He crouches next to Miklan’s grave and presses his palm into its white blanket.

_I hate you, but I still love you, and I’m finding a way to live with it._

Tomorrow, he’ll pick up a pen and convince the margrave to provide restitution to every home and village his brother tore asunder. Tomorrow, the long night loses its grip on the land, and in short weeks or months the first snowdrops will nudge into the sunlight and bloom above these bones.

A snowflake spirals from the sky and alights on the back of his hand, ethereal and impermanent, a fleeting benediction. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Sylvain. I am so sorry, my dude. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and look what I've done.
> 
> I've had "Pretty Angry" on heavy rotation. Yes, it's by Blues Traveler, but I did not know that and the lyrics ripped the stuffing out of me. It's worth a listen if you're in the thick of it (must be heard to appreciate in full).


End file.
